Daily Deals- what have you purchased

[gagaliya]

Originally Posted by MegatronG1

It's a long overdue correction. This hobby/industry is wishy-washy, but then again, so are most of all of the "serious" ones. Maybe pop culture isn't having the pull it once did, given the ever-shrinking attention span and plethora of distractions available. Sideshow needs to figure out its customer. Things have changed, they have to clear out inventory regardless, but they'll have to change course in some areas to avoid this going forward.

I don?t think it?s the customer or pop culture change but an increase in supply. Not sure if you were around during the old days, sideshow was the only game in town. They would release a marvel piece once every 2-4 weeks, and everyone would go bat sht crazy because it?s the only 1/4 statue you can get regardless what stupid 5th tier character it is or how badly the production piece is (remember rogue pf anyone? Those eyes still give me nightmares lol). Then they finally got DC license I still remember when the first ever joker pf was announced, what a day.

Then xm came along, and that was the beginning of the end, it raised expectation of all the collectors how much better both the quality and design could be. I remember hiring people in Singapore just so I can ship the statue to, then getting ripped off by local ups to ship to us, charged me like $700 at msrp rate just to ship it to us, think it was that Jean one with Phoenix behind it, there was nothing like it…like wow you can do that in a statue!

By the time prime1 started dumping stuff there was massive fatigue, there is only so many Batman one can get excited over regardless of the love for the character. Then the Chinese guys realized wtf are we being cheap labor and let those douche Americans make the money and started to get serious of making their own high end stuff instead of cheap knockoffs, it was all over.

Nowadays sideshow is more of an online shopping website than a statue company, they just happen to release some stuff as well, to their credit they saw the writing on the wall very early on and pivoted to view other vendors as potential clients instead of competitors (just wish they drop medicom and those damn kubricks that pollute every listing) . Only xm they refused to accept under sideshow?s exclusive US license due to the long history of bad blood between those 2 companies.

[IcedDog]

Originally Posted by gagaliya

Only xm they refused to accept under sideshow?s exclusive US license due to the long history of bad blood between those 2 companies.

[dao2]

Originally Posted by IcedDog

God knows what happened behind the scenes but even on this forum when XM first started out one of the SS guys on here (igor or whatever his name is, went to tweeterhead I believe) and they were (and still are) way better quality then SS stuff he said they'd never last. Fast forward a little bit and SS was clearly losing enough of their customers cause they went and complained to marvel about retailers that XM used were selling statues to people in the states and had them dropped the hammer down on them, tons of people's pre-orders were cancelled and it became a lot more expensive to get their statues in the states.

They hold the license so legally of course they had the recourse, but we all know SS is a big company that holds onto a lot of licenses that other people could do better and it was doubly sad when a SS producer was talking ---- about XM then had to get the licensor involved cause they couldn't deal with it.

[Infinite GLORY]

Originally Posted by dao2

God knows what happened behind the scenes but even on this forum when XM first started out one of the SS guys on here (igor or whatever his name is, went to tweeterhead I believe) and they were (and still are) way better quality then SS stuff he said they'd never last. Fast forward a little bit and SS was clearly losing enough of their customers cause they went and complained to marvel about retailers that XM used were selling statues to people in the states and had them dropped the hammer down on them, tons of people's pre-orders were cancelled and it became a lot more expensive to get their statues in the states.

They hold the license so legally of course they had the recourse, but we all know SS is a big company that holds onto a lot of licenses that other people could do better and it was doubly sad when a SS producer was talking ---- about XM then had to get the licensor involved cause they couldn't deal with it.

I mean I understand what you are trying to say, and I agree that competition is good for companies, but you already summed it up in your post. It's a business. Sideshow want's to make money. XM wasn't doing things legally. Of course they are going to "put the hammer down".

Same as downloading movies illegally or music or whatever. You receive copyright infringement notices for that. Should you be "sad"? No it's just the way things work.

I do agree if certain companies hold a license they should make pieces for that license, but when these licenses expire they go back out to bid and if Sideshow happened to bid more money then they should be entitled to owning said license.

You should be more upset at the companies you like not putting up enough money to take the licenses away when it comes time for renewal.

[gagaliya]

it's just cold blooded business, no-one is at fault.

Xm wasn't doing anything illegal, they have the license for asia and they ONLY sold to asian countries directly.

The issue was lot of distributors / buyers xm sold to, then resold/shipped them to US. So you ended up in a situation where a company that supposedly can only sell in Asia ended up having most of their products sold to US buyers indirectly. Not to mention their product is much better quality / exciting / hyped up than sideshow. Effectively killing sideshow's sale, keep in mind at that time sideshow is still a 1 brand shop that based on their revenue mostly from their own statue sales (and hot toys, but that's a separate category)

So sideshow tried to get them shut down basically by asking marvel to pull their license, ended up in some compromise where XM had to enforce their distributors not to sell to US. As mentioned, it was a whole mess, only way is hire someone local in singapore to buy it, then ship it privately.

Sideshow also tried bunch other stuff, like releasing same characters at a significant discount to xm's release etc.

Nothing really worked xm continued to thrive, and sideshow shifted to become a online marketplace instead of selling only their statue as a business model because they know they cant compete against those newcomers in innovation and quality.

Nowadays no-one cares, you can readily buy xm easily stateside, sideshow should really just swallow the history and bring xm to their site, it will make them lot of money. Maybe it's xm who refuse to come onboard since they are mostly still selling out all their preorders already....who knows.

[Black Cat]

I would say XM & Sideshow both have their good and bad products. XM isn't always the best quality or paint and the same with Sideshow.

[nearmint]

This weeks 10-15% discounts seem kinda weak compared to last week's.

[dao2]

Originally Posted by Infinite GLORY

I mean I understand what you are trying to say, and I agree that competition is good for companies, but you already summed it up in your post. It's a business. Sideshow want's to make money. XM wasn't doing things legally. Of course they are going to "put the hammer down".

Same as downloading movies illegally or music or whatever. You receive copyright infringement notices for that. Should you be "sad"? No it's just the way things work.

I do agree if certain companies hold a license they should make pieces for that license, but when these licenses expire they go back out to bid and if Sideshow happened to bid more money then they should be entitled to owning said license. Also I don't know what in their agreements they have about their distributors, XM was not selling directly to people outside of Asia so it's entirely possible that they weren't doing anything against the contract but SS pulled rank anyway.

You should be more upset at the companies you like not putting up enough money to take the licenses away when it comes time for renewal.

I'm not saying legally they don't have a leg to stand on. I'm saying it's sad to talk ---- about a competitor but you're stuff is such garbage that you couldn't back up your ---- talking :P If he didn't say anything it wouldn't have been anywhere near as pathetic. Legal or not it was quite a poor showing for SS. Also don't assume they go back out for bid, they may not, and who knows how long the contract is even for ;p

Originally Posted by Black Cat

I would say XM & Sideshow both have their good and bad products. XM isn't always the best quality or paint and the same with Sideshow.

SS is doing a lot better than they were at that time probably because they had to up their game to compete with companies like XM and P1. But even still SS is worse quality than XM as a whole even now but almost everything was low quality compared to what they put out today (and even before) at that point.

[Tbolt]

Originally Posted by IcedDog

Some of the guys involved in XM were recasters of Sideshow pieces back in the day.

[Tbolt]

Originally Posted by gagaliya

it's just cold blooded business, no-one is at fault.

Xm wasn't doing anything illegal, they have the license for asia and they ONLY sold to asian countries directly.

The issue was lot of distributors / buyers xm sold to, then resold/shipped them to US. So you ended up in a situation where a company that supposedly can only sell in Asia ended up having most of their products sold to US buyers indirectly. Not to mention their product is much better quality / exciting / hyped up than sideshow. Effectively killing sideshow's sale, keep in mind at that time sideshow is still a 1 brand shop that based on their revenue mostly from their own statue sales (and hot toys, but that's a separate category)

So sideshow tried to get them shut down basically by asking marvel to pull their license, ended up in some compromise where XM had to enforce their distributors not to sell to US. As mentioned, it was a whole mess, only way is hire someone local in singapore to buy it, then ship it privately.

Sideshow also tried bunch other stuff, like releasing same characters at a significant discount to xm's release etc.

Nothing really worked xm continued to thrive, and sideshow shifted to become a online marketplace instead of selling only their statue as a business model because they know they cant compete against those newcomers in innovation and quality.

Nowadays no-one cares, you can readily buy xm easily stateside, sideshow should really just swallow the history and bring xm to their site, it will make them lot of money. Maybe it's xm who refuse to come onboard since they are mostly still selling out all their preorders already....who knows.

B.S. XM were using the grey market to sell in the US and still do. They were directing people to their trusted re-sellers on their FB page. Frankly it's a miracle they didn't get their license pulled.

Can't compete? Really? They still put out more product than XM. What are you a Grumpy Bear clone all of a sudden?